Samsung have apparently decided to drop their European lawsuits against Apple for infringement of patents. The relevant ones are those in Germany, UK, Netherlands, Italy and France.

A spokesperson for Samsung had this to say :

“Samsung remains committed to licensing our technologies on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms, and we strongly believe it is better when companies compete fairly in the marketplace, rather than in court. In this spirit, Samsung has decided to withdraw our injunction requests against Apple on the basis of our standard essential patents pending in European courts, in the interest of protecting consumer choice.”

It is unclear whether Samsung chose (or were forced) to go down this route, although it could be that Apple and Samsung have reached some kind of agreement. EU law states that all patents must be licensed on a FRAND basis – Fair Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory. The patents in question related to wireless technology and Apple are saying that Samsung didn’t license the patents under FRAND. The decision from Samsung comes shortly after an US court ruled that they would not be banning the sale of 26 different Samsung products

These current lawsuits started back in 2010, after the first Galaxy device was released. Although the European ones have been dropped, the battle in the US courts continues to be fought.